


Requiem

by 5kenx5



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Canon Compliant, F/F, PTSD, Root and John are still dead, Violence, some happy flashbacks, this is very sad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-07-29 14:49:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7688635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/5kenx5/pseuds/5kenx5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Home could be chaos; it could be violence. It could be the thing that made a lullaby out of the mayhem.<br/>They say home is where the heart is, but what are you supposed to do when home is buried under eight feet of dirt with a bullet in her chest?<br/>Maybe you really can’t go home again.<br/>Or maybe her heart was already in that unmarked grave too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Black Gives Way to Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place about 5 months after the show ends, but there's a lot of flashbacks. This is really sad and I wrote it because I clearly hate myself. Shaw is dealing with Root and John being dead, and she's losing her grip on reality after Samaritan's torture and having nothing to tether her to what's real and what isn't. This is basically just a really dark rendition of her coming to terms with everything. Lots of flashbacks with happy moments though!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> She never bothered to check if he was okay and frankly, she didn’t care. He shouldn’t have called her Sam; only one person was allowed to get away with that.
> 
> And she couldn't call Shaw anything anymore.

The nightmare began the same every night.

Shaw watched it from the outside, smothered in her suppressed screams. She knew what would happen, how the story would end. She tried to warn them, the versions of Root and herself on the other side of the glass she was trapped behind, but her lungs were full of water and her jaw was clamped shut and the silence just grew heavier with each strangled heartbeat that fought its way out in her heaving chest. There was no stopping it. It just played on like a horror movie.

_“I’m not leaving you again!” Root’s voice broke through the reverberating gunfire._

_“Get him out of here now or I’ll shoot you myself! Go, go!” Shaw yelled back. She watched as Root reluctantly scrambled into the car, her eyes pleading and desperate in that vastly ephemeral moment where Harold and The Machine and the mission didn’t exist and they were the only two shapes in the system, the only two chords in the symphony, but they both knew that stolen fragment of time was all it would ever be – nothing more than a shattered gaze in a fleeting moment._

Shaw would never be able to forget that final beseeching glance. She tried to tell Root to stay, but her voice didn’t work, her lips didn’t move. There was a fire in her throat where her screams should’ve been. _Stay here with me, Root,_ Shaw willed with every thought in her head and every nerve in her body until her skin was itching and her brain was melting and her eyes were trying to crawl back down into her skull instead of watching helplessly as Root steered the car unwittingly towards her own death.

She never stayed.   

_Shaw was outnumbered and alone, but that only made it a fair fight. She took out the remainder of the agents, and as she curled her finger around the trigger in her final shot, she couldn’t help but feel the shadow of a memory brush against her fingertips. The cold metal hadn’t reminded her of Root’s gentle touch, but the power underneath it had the same surge of comfort. When the cavalry arrived, Shaw took in the sea of destruction she’d been swimming through, and as the boys paddled out to meet her in the depths, she thought for a moment she might finally understand why people’s eyes glistened when they spoke about home._

Home could be chaos; it could be violence. It could be the thing that made a lullaby out of the mayhem.

They say home is where the heart is, but what are you supposed to do when _home_ is buried under eight feet of dirt with a bullet in her chest?

Maybe you really can’t go home again.

Or maybe her heart was already in that unmarked grave too. 

She knew what was supposed to happen next. The Machine would direct them to the crime scene and Lionel would talk to the officers to try and piece together a story neither of them would ever see the whole picture of. Shaw remembered every piece of yellow tape, each gunshot in the car, the exact pattern of the blood stain in the driver’s seat. She remembered going with John because action and revenge were things she understood; she wasn’t cut out for pacing a hospital waiting room. She never considered the possibility that Root might not make it out of surgery; at least, not until it was too late.   

If she ever regretted one thing in her life, it was letting Root die alone – letting Root die at all.

After all, she’s the one that told her to get into that car.

Shaw watched on silently, helplessly – but something was different.

_The Machine sent them to an address just a few blocks away. They pulled up to the abandoned house just as Jeff Blackwell pushed the door open, sniper rifle in tow. The car hadn’t even come to a complete stop before Shaw leaped from the passenger seat to sprint up the stairs after him. She tackled him just before he took his shot, just as a silver car blanketed in bullet holes raced down the street. She could see Root’s chestnut hair fluttering through the open window as she guided the car to the safe house._

_Alive._

Shaw woke up to the sound of her own strangled breaths.

She’d saved Root every night for 5 months, in dozens of different ways, always stronger or faster or smarter than the last. She always saved her. Not when it mattered of course, but every night after that. In every nightmare. Although, Shaw wasn’t sure anymore if she was falling asleep into a nightmare, or waking up into one.  

Sometimes she thought none of it was real at all. 

***

Shaw had to admit, the newest bunch of trainees weren’t _quite_ as pathetic as the last. The Machine had been sending them to her in groups of 5 every 6 weeks like clockwork. She wasn’t sure why The Machine was finally building an army now that the war was _over._

She didn’t ask.

She hadn’t spoken to The Machine directly in nearly 3 months. She’d been bothering Shaw since they took Samaritan down to find a new partner, suggesting recruits that showed the most promise in each bunch. Shaw reminded Her she worked better alone. Then one Saturday morning, Shaw awoke to a heavy knock at her apartment door and she pushed an empty bottle of bourbon out of her bed when she swung her legs around to stumble towards the noise. She reeked of alcohol and bad decisions and she wasn’t sure if she was just hungover or still drunk but when the found a tall, chiseled, blue-eyed man in a suit informing her monotonously that he was supposed to be her new partner, she crashed her knuckles into the base of his nose so hard she wasn’t sure if the _crack_ that broke out into the hallway was from his face or her fingers. She told The Machine to fuck off that day and had only gotten calls from payphones, save for the occasional text, ever since. Even from the payphone, She still spoke in _her_ voice.

Sometimes Shaw was tempted to give in, late at night when Bear’s breathing went soft and the silence became unbearable. She’d picked up the ear piece from the drawer on Root’s side of the bed so many times, it was almost a habit now, thinking about putting it in just to hear her voice again, but she never did. If Shaw was anything, she was resilient.

Despite her refusal to speak with Her directly, however, She had still refrained from choosing a new Analog Interface. Shaw never asked about it; she knew why. _Root._   _Maybe The Machine took more than just her voice_ , Shaw thought.

Maybe She took her stubborn, unwavering commitment to Shaw too.

She had been working with the newest bunch of recruits for 2 weeks. She spent less time wanting to kill them than any of the previous groups, so she supposed that was a good sign. Good for them at least.

Mondays and Fridays were sparring days, but Shaw hated those days the most. She had to hold back, pause to teach and correct, avoid moves that caused serious damage – which all her best moves did. Sparring days were when she missed John the most; John never held back with her and she never had to against him. There was a trust there. When he swung, he trusted she’d block it. She missed handing out cold beers after a good match instead of passing around ice packs and ibuprofen to the whiny kids The Machine had somehow deemed as assets.

She supposed every army needed a few pawns.

Milo Raushka was the youngest in the group at 29. He’d been discharged from the Air Force after serving his time and had briefly worked as a police officer in D.C. before budget cuts took his job. He was easily the most promising one in the group, but even so, Shaw knew she could still kill him 17 different ways with both arms tied her behind her back before he even had a chance to flinch.

It was a comforting thought.

They’d been on the mats for 20 minutes and she was pleased to only have to pause to correct his movements twice. He was no John Reese, but he handled himself alright. Shaw’s heart was pounding with adrenaline, sweat dripping down into her mouth. She could taste the salt. It took more willpower than she realized she had to keep from unleashing herself on him completely. She felt like she was fighting harder against herself than she was against him. Every punch she let him block, every swing she slowed down, every movement she made obvious; she almost considering cutting the sparring session short before she knocked the kid out on impulse.

“Good, but don’t leave your face open like that,” She instructed when he took a wide swing at her but left himself unguarded. He nodded in acknowledgment and repeated the move, this time following her coaching. _Quick learner,_ Shaw thought to herself before she kicked his knees and watched him drop to the ground with a huff. _But not quick enough._

She started walking off the mat to pick her next sparring partner when Milo made the worst mistake he’d ever made.

“Wait, Sam, can we go just one more time?” He pushed himself up from the gym floor and sauntered forward towards her. She froze in her spot, every muscle in her body tensing up in a raging fire that bellowed in her chest and her gut for just a moment before it exploded. She spun around to face him, her eyes black and hollow and framing the flames whipping through her. Milo only had enough time to furrow his brows in confusion before she had his shirt twisted through her fingers. He was at almost a full foot taller than her, but that didn’t make her any less intimidating.

“You wanna go again, okay,” she nodded, her voice a low, raspy growl, as she pulled him in so close her nose brushed against his jaw line. She faintly remembered John once telling her to count to ten before she reacted out of anger. She didn’t even try. It just kept playing through her head again and again – _Sam, Sam, Sam,_ in Milo’s voice instead of _hers –_ and she couldn’t stop the volcanic eruption of anger even if she wanted to. And she didn’t.

 _Sam._ She grabbed him by the shoulders and forced him down, slamming her knee into his jaw so hard she felt the crunch in her kneecap. He stumbled backwards, clutching his face with one hand, swinging blindly at her with the other.

 _Sam._ She easily dodged his futile attempts to hold her back, catching one of his flailing arms in the air and twisting it behind his back until his shoulder popped. She used the moment to punch him in the left kidney with the force of her whole body.

 _Sam._ She forced him back to the ground with a swift kick to the back of his knees. He caught himself with his hands, falling in a near pushup position. He tried to lift himself back up, spurting out blood onto the mat underneath him, but his arms were wobbly and Shaw didn’t give him the chance.

 _Sam._ She slammed her bare foot into the soft part of his stomach with as much force as she could muster. His body collapsed face first into the mat. She kicked him again for good measure; his body rolling over the mat like a rag doll.

 _Sam._ She grabbed a handful of his hair, pulling his head up forcefully, his eyes were pleading with hers, searching for some hint of humanity in there, but he found nothing. Her eyes were hollow, just a shallow nothingness – the physical embodiment of rage. They say your eyes are the windows to your soul, but he could’ve sworn hers were closed off and boarded up. Or maybe there was just no soul in there to see. He didn't know she had only just found hers when it died with a phone call.

 _Sam._ She pushed her knee into his throat, slamming her fist into his face despite her split knuckles. _Sam, Sam, Sam,_ she heard the voice with each punch, causing her to just hit him harder and harder. There was nothing but the roar of an angry ocean in her ears. She couldn’t hear the rest of the recruits begging her stop, or see them backing away in fear of having her fury turned on them. She just saw red.

 _“Sam.”_ But this time, it was _her_ voice, echoing through the room. She stopped mid punch, letting her arm fall to her side at the sound of Root’s voice. It wasn’t exactly Root’s voice, Shaw thought that .4% felt like much more than it was, but it was enough to pull her back into reality.

“Stop,” She commanded simply. Shaw looked down at the bloody mess beneath her, at the terrified recruits standing around her. She felt nothing. Milo’s eyes were closed and his body was limp. She wasn’t even sure when it was exactly that he slipped out of consciousness.  She stood up, wiping her bloody knuckles on her sweat-soaked tank top. They stung, but she didn’t notice. She pinpointed the intercom system in the gym as the origin of Her voice.

“Sweetie, you can’t – ” she cut Her off mid-sentence, pulling a gun out of her bag and unloading it on the speaker system.

“Same time tomorrow,” Shaw monotonously informed the shuddering recruits huddled together in the corner. She didn’t turn around to face them. She grabbed her bag and walked out the gym door without looking back.

She went back to her apartment and never thought about Milo again. She never bothered to check if he was okay and frankly, she didn’t care. He shouldn’t have called her Sam; only one person was allowed to get away with that.

And she couldn't call Shaw anything anymore.  


	2. Eclipse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flashback Chapter: sometime in season 3 shortly after Root is tortured by Control. First time Shaw let's Root stay the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When she realized the way they fit together like a celestial catastrophe, like two heavenly bodies that collide in the abyss of nothingness to make something equally terrifying and beautiful, she thought maybe she finally understood what people meant when they talked about finding religion ~

_Root had only been back in New York for two hours before she found herself having a staring contest with the peep hole on Shaw’s apartment door, and she couldn’t place how she wound up there or why her hands were tremoring softly at the thought of knocking but she knew she couldn’t just keep standing there motionless in the hallway, it was 1:30 in the morning after all, so she tapped her knuckles against the wooden barrier_ _and put on the ‘perky psycho’ smile she knew Shaw expected from her. Ordinarily, she would’ve just picked the lock if she wanted inside. Personal space had never been an issue for her; invading other people’s was pure entertainment by her standards. But Shaw was never just “other people,” and her boundaries, as fun as they were to push, weren’t something Root wanted to break through uninvited. Besides, she hadn’t seen Shaw since she’d been kidnapped by Control, and each knock on the door felt loaded as she remembered that Shaw went back to look for her. Nobody had cared enough to come back for her as long as she could remember._

_The irony of situation – that the first person to care was a sociopath who denied any capacity to care at all – was not lost on her._

_When Shaw finally opened the door, her hair in a disheveled ponytail and her eyes still dark and heavy, Root’s brain seemed to shut down and restart, like an annoying glitch, and the file for her lithe supply of witty come-ons was momentarily corrupted._

_It helped her to think that way when she got nervous, that her brain worked like a computer system. It was soothing._

_Luckily, Shaw spoke before either of them were subjected to the awkward silence that was almost born into the moment._

_“Root,” Shaw started through gritted teeth, her bicep slightly flexing under her torn gray tank top, “what the hell are you doing here?” It gave Root just enough time to reboot her system and compose herself._

_“I just got back from Beijing, wanted to stop by and see how my favorite girl was doing,” Root said innocently, letting her tongue dance playfully on her lips. Shaw was not amused._

_“And that couldn’t wait until, I don’t know, morning?” Shaw snarled, clearly not pleased with having her sleep interrupted. Root let out a heavy sigh._

_“I suppose, but where’s the fun in that? Besides, I thought you might be hungry.” She took a step forward on those endless legs and held up a bag of Chinese take-out like she was teasing a dog with a bone. Even Shaw couldn’t deny that it was essentially the same concept. She couldn’t turn down food any more than a starving animal could._

_“So what do you say, Sweetie,” Root took another step forward, close enough for Shaw to smell the apple shampoo in her hair and the stale bubblegum on her breath. “Up for a midnight snack?” The double-entendre of her words was made all the more clear by the primal hunger flashing in her eyes – a hunger that even the best Chinese food in the tri-state area couldn’t satiate. Shaw tried to cover the small growl that escaped in the back of her throat with a cough but her ears turned red and her eyes glossed over and she instinctively crossed her arms over her chest without breaking eye contact so Root knew she was on the right track._

_But she’d forgotten how well Shaw could play the game too._

_“Always,” Shaw whispered, leaning forward with that flirty smile that always melted Root completely. She felt Shaw’s hand slip against hers and her breath caught in her throat for a moment._

_“Thanks for the food,” Shaw quipped with a wink and pulled the bag out of Root’s hand, stepping back into her apartment and pushing the door shut with her heel. Root found herself staring back at that peep hole again, but this time it seemed to be mocking her. Shaw was finally playing the game, and Root never lost a game without a fight. She gripped the door handle harder than necessary and was surprised to find that Shaw hadn’t even bothered to latch the door all the way, let alone lock it._

_The apartment was pretty dim, only the kitchen light had been turned on, but 2 of the 3 bulbs were burnt out and Root wondered if Shaw just wasn’t home enough to notice or if she really just didn’t care about the dark. The place was surprisingly clean, aside from the overflowing trash can by the sink. There weren’t even any dishes in the sink, though Root supposed that might be explained by the overwhelming amount of take-out bags in the trash. Shaw was leaning back against the counter, digging into a box of orange chicken like she hadn’t eaten in hours, because when it came to food and Shaw, hours were like days.  Root thought she might’ve only had one dinner. She was surprised to find that Shaw had opened the box of Chow Mein and stuck a fork in the noodles instead of leaving a pair of chopsticks._

_Root had always faked her use of chopsticks very well, at least she thought so. She’d spent her entire life graciously stabbing at the noodles with confidence, enough to keep the people around her from paying her any attention. Usually she’d manage to get enough noodles looped around the sticks to play it off, but the first time she had Chinese food with Shaw, she hadn’t even gotten through one bite before Shaw literally inhaled a piece of her sweet n’ sour pork in a noise Root couldn’t exactly pinpoint, somewhere between a laugh and a choke. She spent fifteen minutes trying to teach her to use the chopsticks, which she reminded Root repeatedly in what felt like30 second intervals that using chopsticks were “the easiest fucking thing you could do with your fingers,” earning several smirks and insinuating glances from the hacker, but they didn’t really make any progress and Shaw went back to her pork after handing Root a fork with a look that fell somewhere between disapproval and amusement._

_Root couldn’t fight the smile that tugged at her lips when she saw the fork in her favorite Chinese dish and realized that Shaw remembered._

_“How’d you know I wouldn’t just leave?” Root sat down on the bar stool, facing Shaw across the kitchen, and twirled the fork through her noodles._

_“Like you’d ever pass up an opportunity for buggin’ me,” Shaw said with an eye roll through a mouthful of orange chicken._

_“Touché,” Root agreed, taking a small bite of the Chow Mein. She swirled the noodles around her mouth for a minute, admiring the taste. Shaw had already wolfed down most of the orange chicken. Root thought that sometimes Shaw might actually inhale her food whole instead of chewing it. Watching Shaw eat was like an art to her._

_Shaw kept glancing up at her between bites, opening her mouth like she was going to say something and then shoving a mouthful of food in there instead. It wasn’t like Shaw to hold back, so Root couldn’t help but feel the growing awkwardness in the room._

_“I’m fine, Shaw,” Root smiled, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes and Shaw didn’t like the way her last name fell out of Root’s mouth like a forced tumble instead of song._

_“Control –” Shaw started, but Root didn’t let her finish._

_“I said I’m fine.”_

_“Okay,” Shaw nodded, exhaling and pushing the box of beef and broccoli across the counter. Root searched her eyes, but as always, Shaw’s emotions didn’t show. She somehow looked both relieved and angry, if that were possible. Root was good at reading people, but Shaw had always been a mystery to her._

_What could she say? She’d always loved a good mystery._

_Shaw circled around the counter and stood facing Root, which Root absentmindedly noted as a fairly interesting sight since Shaw was eye level with her for once and it was only because she was sitting. Shaw reached out, gently pushing her hair behind her left ear and Root just melted into her fingertips because it was softer than she could ever remember being touched, and the last time she felt a small, calloused hand reach around to move her hair, she was met with a bone saw tearing through her skin instead of a silky touch she felt all the way down to her toes, but it only lasted a moment before Shaw’s hand was curled around the back of her neck and she was pulling her in for a crashing kiss. The little yelp that escaped Root’s mouth when Shaw’s hand accidentally rubbed against the scar on her right ear, a scar Shaw didn’t even know was there, was swallowed in Shaw’s throat when the kiss instantaneously deepened into a hot and heavy adventure full of tongues and teeth, mixed sounds of pleasure that played like a never ending chorus that neither of them could or even wanted to sort out whose throat each note originated from. It was a harmony, like you couldn’t have one without the other, trebles and basses in a whirlwind of crescendos that was only kept in rhythm by kick drums in their chests._

_No prayer, no promise, not even the hand of God herself could’ve held onto Root’s heart that night._

_She never meant to fall in love._

_But when they’d finally made it back into Shaw’s bedroom, shirts and shorts and everything in between leaving a trail like bread crumbs through the apartment and Shaw was everywhere around her, touching her and breathing her and holding her together while she unraveled her completely, smothering her with her hands and her lips and her tongue; when she felt herself crying out Shaw’s name into her shoulder and into the sweet blanket of air encompassing them as she writhed beneath her and felt herself contract into her; when she sunk her teeth into Shaw’s neck and felt beads of sweat tickling the tip of her tongue and felt Shaw’s nails ripping through the pale skin on her back like she wasn’t afraid to hurt her, like she wasn’t some fragile porcelain doll on the edge of the counter that would shatter completely if you bumped into it too hard; when she realized the way they fit together like a celestial catastrophe, like two heavenly bodies that collide in the abyss of nothingness to make something equally terrifying and beautiful, she thought maybe she finally understood what people meant when they talked about finding religion – about faith and souls and god. It awoke this feeling of pure divinity she could only describe as ethereal._

_She didn’t mean to fall in love that night, but there was no turning back once she had._

_After all, you can’t peel apart two stars once they’ve crashed._

_You can only wait for them to consume each other._

_Root knew the drill; they’d been through it enough times. They didn’t have sex, except of course for when they did, which was Shaw’s rule and she didn’t really understand it but it didn’t seem like Shaw understood it all that much either so Root never bothered asking. When they were done, Shaw would tell her goodnight and leave, or she’d lay on her back in silence until Root would leave, and then she’d take a long, hot shower until the water turned cold. Somehow, because Shaw was literally unlike anyone else in this plane of existence, she would be in a_ worse _mood after sex, snapping at Root she needed to get out if she stayed laying on her chest just a little too long, or rushing out of the apartment without even grabbing all of her clothes if Root suggested what Shaw had dubbed ‘The Sappy Breakfast Thing.’_

_Root wouldn’t have put it up with it if it wasn’t Shaw, if it weren’t for the few glimpses she’d get where Shaw would look at her like she was the only thing that existed in the entire universe, where she’d swallow her smile and roll her eyes but couldn’t keep the glimmer out of them when Root teased her with one of her many witty come-ons. She felt it with the panic in Shaw’s voice when she walked into a certain death trap, she felt it when Shaw patched her up just a little more gently than she ever did John, she felt it when Shaw would glare at her possessively after an injury like_ she _was the only one allowed to hurt her. She knew Shaw was struggling with the feelings thing, because as Shaw so often reminded her, she didn’t_ have _them, but Root thought if a sociopath could fall in love with anybody, a more-than-mildly psychotic, computer hacking, ex-killer for hire who worshipped a super computer could be the exception._

_She never lost hope that Shaw would figure that out someday._

_And besides, Root was never one for playing games that were easy. It was no fun that way._

_“What’s this?” Shaw asked, her voice still husky in that after-sex tone, brushing Root’s hair out of the way and tenderly running her finger over the scar behind Root’s ear. The stitches were out, but it was still a little scabby and Root could hear the twinge of Doctor Shaw in her voice._

_“Control tried playing Doctor for a while,” Root tried to tease, but her voice shook lightly at the memory and she wanted to tell Shaw to speak up because she couldn’t hear her that well on that side but the words wouldn’t come out._

_“What did she do, exactly?” Shaw rolled over a little more to get a closer look at the wound. It strung a little when she touched it, but she didn’t say anything. Shaw’s touch was different; it was more calming than it was painful. It was almost soothing, and Root had to take a few deep breaths to prepare herself for Shaw’s snap change in temperament. It would come any time now and she’d have to head back home alone again after another night with Shaw, though she wasn’t even sure where home was anymore. She knew Shaw felt_ something, _and just sometimes she wished she’d admit it, to herself or to Root or even to the notches in her head board, just so the truth of it could exist inside a quantified moment of time before one of them wound up in the ground. She loved Shaw exactly because of who she was, but it hurt more than she’d like to admit to think that maybe she was nothing more than a warm body to her all along, just a fun toy to keep her occupied until something new came along._

_“A little uh, impromptu surgery. She took my hearing,” Root told her, her voice smaller than she meant it. She tried to keep it light because she didn’t want Shaw to know how much it had really affected her, but Shaw could always see through her masks. She couldn’t keep a cover identity around Shaw if she tried. She was always just Root. And that was just as horrifying as it was comforting._

_“Stapendectomy?” Shaw questioned, her voice hard. Root was hyperaware of her hands gently moving across her body, almost absentmindedly, just tracing patterns along her skin, absorbing her. It was new. Shaw would never admit she missed her, and maybe she didn’t even realize she did, but she just couldn’t stop subconsciously moving to memorize her shape anyway._

_Root tugged her own hand up to the wound behind her ear before nodding._

_“I’ll kill her,” Shaw suggested, lifting herself up onto her elbows to get a better look at Root’s face, and despite her joking tone, Root knew with absolute certainty from the broiling anger in her eyes that Shaw would get out of bed right in that moment and hunt her down by morning if she just said the words. It was tempting, but they had bigger things to worry about._

_“I appreciate the offer, Sweetie, but bygones are bygones. We have more important enemies to deal with right now.” Root tried her best to keep her voice steady as she sat up in bed. She wanted to leave before she had to walk home with the memory of Shaw kicking her out. She had to forcibly hold back a sigh as she felt Shaw’s arm fall from across her body when she sat up._

_Shaw was quiet for a while, but Root heard her breathing change when she pulled her pants from the floor on the other side of the room and started tugging them on._

_“Root?” Shaw asked, her voice an octave higher than usual. She was staring at the ceiling fan relentlessly, like the secrets of the universe could come spilling out of it at any moment. She didn’t even blink._

_“Hmm?”_

_“You can uh, stay. If you want.” The words stumbled out of Shaw in a way that reminded Root of how she cleaned her room as a kid, which was an odd thought for the moment but she couldn’t help it. She would shove all of her toys in the closet when her mom told her to clean her room, and she would keep piling them in there until her mom came back to check. And then it would explode, and the toys would come spilling out in this rampant avalanche of stuffed animals. Shaw’s voice sounded like the closet door finally popped and a few of the toys on the top came plummeting out in an uneven tumble. Root couldn’t wait until the door popped off its hinges completely, to see what else Shaw kept piled up inside._

_She walked back over to the bed hesitantly, like if she even breathed wrong Shaw would change her mind. She could tell Shaw was thinking but didn’t ask about what. She settled back into the pillow on Shaw’s left but before she could get comfortable, Shaw turned over towards her with her eyebrows furrowed together and then mumbled,_

_“Switch sides with me.”_

_Root cocked her head to a little bit did as she was told._

_“That’s better,” Shaw breathed into the crook of her neck and Root didn’t even try to hold back her smile. She could hear her on that side._

_“I knew you missed me,” Root teased, adjusting her body against Shaw’s._

_“Watch it, or you’re sleeping on the couch.” Shaw quipped with a serious tone in her voice. But she didn’t deny it either._

_“Goodnight, Sameen,” Root hummed as she settled into Shaw’s chest. Shaw’s arm hesitantly snaked up her bare back, holding her close to her._

_“Night,” Shaw yawned, checking the clock before closing her eyes. It was 3:57 a.m. She told herself it didn’t count as Root sleeping over if it basically already morning. She fell into a blissful dream that involved herself, Control, and a very large torture chamber. It was the best sleep she’d had in years._


	3. Disintegration

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, when the wind blew in through the window just right, she could still feel the faint promise of heat dancing across her bare chest.

 Shaw’s knuckles were still caked with blood when she made it back to her apartment. She couldn’t tell if it was Milo’s blood or hers, though she knew it was probably a mixture of both with the way his face was turned to mush and the way the stinging ache in her hands shot all the way up her whole arm. It’d been a long time since she lost her temper like that, but it didn’t shock her in the least. She’d been angrier than normal recently, for the past few months; angrier than she could ever remember feeling, and for Shaw that was really saying something. It’d been boiling up inside her and the only thing surprising about it was that it took so long to finally burst out. She was angry at Greer for kidnapping her, torturing her, angry at all the agents that helped, angry at Samaritan _and_ The Machine (which only made her even angrier because what kind of lunatic actually holds a grudge against evil robot overlords?), angry at John for being the self-sacrificing hero he always had to be, angry at Harold for not opening The Machine’s system like Root wanted, for being alive when that bullet was meant for him, angry at Root herself for having the audacity to die at all, for forcing her way into Shaw’s life like a parasite, nesting in every inch of her, making itself at home, and then just _disappearing._ Mostly though, she was angry at herself. All the time. And the harder she tried to fight it, the darker the rage grew.

She grabbed a bottle of Scotch from her liquor cabinet, which had severely depleted over the last several months, and went into the bathroom to rinse the blood off her knuckles. The skin was cracked open, chunks of dead flesh falling free into the warm water. She could see the bruising already setting in over her fingers, but she didn’t mind. She poked at the puffy, red swelling on her hand and felt it all the way up to her elbow. She let the water run over her hand until it ran cold, and then wrapped them up loosely in the bandages she kept under her sink. Bottle of Scotch in hand, she headed back out to the bedroom and couldn’t help but wonder what she’d be doing right now if Samaritan was never born; if she never lost her grip on reality, if John and Root hadn’t died, and Harold hadn’t left and her whole world hadn’t been obliterated all at once. She certainly didn’t think she’d be downing another bottle of alcohol she couldn’t afford alone in her bedroom in the middle of the night after picking a fight with a kid who didn’t deserve it like some high school dropout stuck trying to relive his glory days.

She found Bear asleep on Root’s side of the bed when she flipped the light switch on. The light bulb flickered for a moment before steadying. Bear poked his head up at the noise, but lowered his ears back with a soft whine when he saw Shaw in the doorway. She sent a reassuring smile towards him, but you can’t lie to dogs and he just leveled his head back onto the pillow with a soft huff.

Three years ago, Shaw would sleep in the middle of her bed sprawled out diagonally with the blanket wrapped around her like a burrito. She enjoyed the space no matter how big the bed was. But now, her bed just felt impossibly large sleeping in it alone. She was almost relieved when Bear started crawling up onto Root’s side before bed, just so he could take up some of the space, to make the bed feel like it didn’t stretch on forever. It helped some, but sometimes she still woke up when she tried to tuck an arm around the lump next to her and felt thick fur instead of silky skin. She didn’t have the heart to kick him off the bed. He missed _her_ too. And it was nice to fall asleep to the sound of someone else breathing again.

He had a bunny slipper tucked under his belly; Shaw noticed it when she plopped down onto the bed. She tugged it out from underneath him, ignoring the slobber and his warning glance of caution for touching his toy, and looked at the stupid floppy ears he’d almost chewed off. She could picture Root walking through her kitchen in the same damn slippers, the ears flopping around while she dragged her feet across the tile. Shaw thought they were the most ridiculous thing she’d ever seen, but here she was 5 months later and she still ordered the same ones whenever Bear tore through another pair. She told herself it was him, to make him feel better. She didn’t know if it helped really, but she never stopped ordering them anyway.

The Scotch hit a bit harder than she expected, but she still swished it down her throat relishing in the burn. She thought about popping the ear piece in to talk to The Machine, to hear _her,_ but she knew she’d be scolded for beating up Milo and instead of dealing with that, she just took another swig of the scotch and tried to keep her mind from going back to the place it always did. She never thought she’d break, not once in her life, but Samaritan broke her and they broke her well and she was held together by nothing but a few pieces of duct tape finally tearing at the seams, and she knew once they popped open she’d never be able to tape herself back together again. She’d just be a few lose shards of glass that were too shattered to ever be anything more. She wondered more and more often if this was all just Greer messing with her head again.

She drank most of the bottle staring at her wall in the dark, dreaming about a time when that box felt like home and the chipped paint looked like something other than a reflection of the fist shaped holes in the wall from nights where bloody knuckles were the only security blankets familiar enough to cradle against her all night long. She never would’ve kept that crappy apartment after she got back from Samaritan if it weren’t for that stain on the carpet where Root spilled her drink, or that one outlet in the living room that shut all the power off if you tried to plug anything into it because Root fried it with her computer, or that spot on the wall behind the bed where Root had written her name in Sharpie like a tenth grader marking her territory and didn’t tell Shaw about it for days until she finally found it and demanded Root scrub it off. Root had told her she’d only do it if Shaw got it tattooed on herself instead. She didn’t.

Shaw missed those first few days after she got back, the days where she’d look in the mirror and pray to every god she’d never believed in that when she woke up in the morning, she wouldn’t be strapped to a bed with bright lights and dark eyes staring back down at her. Now when she went to sleep, she wanted nothing more than to wake up to find Greer’s eyes pointing down at her telling her she blew her brains out for the 8 thousandth time. That nothing was real. And maybe it wasn’t. She couldn’t tell anymore. It didn’t feel real. It didn’t feel anything.

Some nights, she’d still turn the iron on just to have a staring contest with it, just to remember that scent of hot metal. She’d turn it on and stare at it from across the room as if she was willing it to speak. Her mind always went back to that first conversation. If it weren’t for that threat of the iron on her skin, she probably never would’ve met Root at all. At the time, she didn’t realize how much of an impact that moment would have on her life. Although, you never really do see the big moments until they’ve already passed. And that moment was one of her biggest.

Sometimes, when the wind blew in through the window just right, she could still feel the faint promise of heat dancing across her bare chest.

It was one of those nights.

She usually drank to escape the thoughts, the thoughts of uncertainty about reality, the thoughts of all the moments she took for granted with Root, the thoughts of how _angry_ she felt over letting her life become this pathetic train wreck. She spent her whole life feeling nothing, but like Gen told her, she just needed to turn the volume up. It was one thing to accept that small echo of sound when it’s all you’ve ever heard, but when you spend your whole life hearing nothing but the shadow of the music, and then suddenly the volume to the most beautiful song ever written is up at full volume, only for the speakers to crash into complete and utter silence before the song even reached the chorus…

She threw the half empty bottle of scotch at the wall and didn’t bother cleaning up the glass.

She finally gave in and put the ear piece in before laying down beside Bear and letting herself drift off to the sound of _her_ voice, with nothing but a prayer to wake up strapped to a hospital bed playing through her head.

“Goodnight, Sameen,” She said gently when Shaw’s responses in the conversations turned into gentle hums.

“Night, Root.” Shaw mumbled back groggily through her Scotch soaked throat.

The Machine didn’t correct her.

 


	4. Epitaph

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flashback to when Shaw goes to visit John and Root's graves a few months after they take Samaritan down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Root was a paradox, an impeccably broken paradox, and Shaw supposed it was only fitting for her paradoxical heart to find love in a sociopath.

_Shaw had only visited Root’s grave once since Samaritan went offline. She hadn’t planned on ever going back after the first initial visit, especially after she finding out that Root’s body wasn’t even buried there anymore. But one night, after falling sleep and into a dream (nightmare?) with Greer’s face sneering down on her and commanding they begin simulation 8 thousand and something, she woke up in a sweat and lost in a deep sea of confusion, finding herself counting the rotations on her ceiling fan again to ground herself. She really couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t anymore. Reality and illusion were destined to blend together when the person who drew the line between them disappeared. Shaw thought she was drowning somewhere in the middle, not quite able to reach the shore on either side. Nothing was real, and nothing was a simulation, and she was trapped, alone, wading perpetually between the two, but her legs were getting tired and her lungs were slowly filling and she didn’t know how much longer she could float out there in the chasm of uncertainty without her lifeline to drag her back to the shore when she wandered too far out._

_She hooked Bear’s leash to his collar intent on taking him for a run. It was two in the morning, but Shaw didn’t mind the late hour. She knew all hope of going back to sleep was lost when she found her liquor cabinet empty. She hadn’t gotten a full night of sleep without a bottle on her nightstand since the day the world went away. Every time she closed her eyes, she was strapped to that hospital bed all over again. Or maybe she really was, and the cold, New York air slapping her in the face as she pulled Bear out of her loft was all just in her head, but she was too tired and too angry and too sober to think about any of that. So instead, she just ducked her head down, eyes trained on her feet, and ran. No destination in mind, no trail, no timer or pace or plan. She just simply ran._

_She didn’t stop until Bear was lagging so hard she nearly tripped on the leash. He was tired, and Shaw didn’t know how long they’d been running but when she finally realized the wheezing that kept creeping into her ears was coming from her own throat and not Bear’s, she decided to rest for just a moment before heading back to the loft._

_It took her a moment to even realize where she was. The black metal gate was cold on her hands as she leaned against it, catching her breath, but the graveyard itself didn’t stand out to her first. It took her a few moments to recall the last time she’d been there, the last time she stood in front of_ her _grave and tried to find the words to say the things she didn’t understand, things she wished she would’ve been able to say to Root before she died even though she was sure Root already knew, things she didn’t have words for, didn’t think words even existed for, but couldn’t stop searching for anyway. She left her apartment in a sprint looking for an answer, looking for hope, looking for that line she’d lost all those months ago; it shouldn’t have surprised her that she wound up searching for_ her _again._

_She hesitantly led Bear through the iron gate, shutting her mind down every time she heard her own voice in her head ask why she was even bothering to find an empty tombstone, and cut along a path she had memorized down the scent of the dead flowers paving the way even though she’d only been there once. The memory was seared so deep in her mind she didn’t think she could escape the maze of that graveyard in her head if she tried._

_“I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, Root.” Shaw sighed, shuffling her feet around in the soft dirt in front of the unmarked tomb stone. She silently cursed herself for talking to a rock, a rock above an empty grave nonetheless, but there was no one around but her and Bear, and she thought there was a pretty high likelihood it was all in her head anyway, so she didn’t stop._

_“I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. I don’t know who I am now – I’m a soldier, I always have been. But now there’s no war for me to fight. I’m a soldier with no war, no home to come back to, and I’m the only one left. Harold’s gone, Fusco’s gone, John’s dead, you’re –” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. She choked on the word “dead” like it didn’t register in her language, which she found ironic with how much death her life had been soaked in._

_“I don’t even know if any of this is real,” she laughed piteously at herself, shaking her head. Bear cocked his head at her, probably wondering why she was laughing at a conversation she was having with a rock. Shaw rubbed his ears absentmindedly. She stayed quiet for a while, stoically staring ahead of her, letting her mind wander to the few real memories she had with Root. The ones that weren’t tainted by Samaritan playing with her head. Sometimes it was hard sorting out what happened in reality and what happened in her mind, they ran so many simulations, nearly ten years’ worth of false memories all crammed into nine months, but the real and the fake sometimes bled together and Shaw had to replay the few she was sure of in her mind every so often to keep it all straight._

_“I miss you,” she finally whispered after a prolonged silence. Her voice shattered the pristine calmness blanketing the frigid air. Her voice was broken and she longed for a drink of something strong and smooth to hold it together at least for the night. Shaw shook her head at herself, feeling uncharacteristically pathetic but unable to stop herself anyways. She knelt down and ran her fingers over the random numbers along the tombstone._

_“You deserved better than this. You_ deserve _better.” Shaw reasoned, a twinge of anger creeping into her voice and she relaxed at the familiar feeling. Anger she knew. Anger she understood. Anger was better than what she could only assume was grief. She tried to channel her anger as much as she could, and she knew it wasn’t healthy, but anger was the only familiar thing she had left for comfort and so she found a safe place in her rage anyway._

_She pulled a blade out of her jacket pocket and pushed herself onto her knees in front of the stone. She carefully began digging into the rock with her knife, deliberately cutting through it beneath the random assortment of numbers. Root didn’t deserve an unmarked grave, but she’d never want to be buried as Samantha Groves either. Samantha Groves died a long time ago; she was a person from Root’s past that she didn’t want to be anymore. Samantha Groves was just a memory, a shell, a name on a piece of paper floating around somewhere in Bishop, Texas with no one to remember it. But Root, Root was_ somebody _._

_If The Machine truly was a God like Root so dutifully believed, then Root was nothing less than an angel._

_She was so far from perfect they weren’t even on the same spectrum; she was tainted and marred and carried the heavy shadow of her past wherever she wound up, and yet the mountain of flaws that comprised her still somehow weaved together in the most immaculate combination of faults that imperfect perfection was inevitable. She was cracked at the seams and still sturdier than steal, ruthless yet compassionate, sadistic yet gentle, psychotically unhinged and yet a stable anchor in a sea of uncertainty. Root was a paradox, an impeccably broken paradox, and Shaw supposed it was only fitting for her paradoxical heart to find love in a sociopath._

_Root was Root, there weren’t words in any language Shaw knew (and she knew four) that could sum up who she was besides the single word she chose to be called. Root. Wurzel._ _Raíz._ ریشه

_Shaw admired her work in the faint moonlight when she’d finished with the last letter, the ‘t’ she’d always enunciated so assuredly, the one she always let her tongue curl around in the way she knew Root loved, and she ran her fingers over the indentations in the stone to trace her name in the rock like an epitaph. It was meticulous, strong and sharp and a little frayed on the edges but still powerful in purpose, much like Shaw herself. She thought Root would appreciate that if she could see it. Although, if Root were around to see it, she wouldn’t be carving into her tombstone to begin with._

_Shaw clenched her hand into a fist as she felt a heat rise up in her chest and pump through her veins. Anger. Rage. Fury. Root should be there, not buried in the ground like tree roots, like she’d gone full circle and come home to rest in a place she’d sealed as her fate at twelve years old when she’d first typed her chosen name into a library computer, not taken by Samaritan operatives to be cut up and mutilated even after all the damage they’d already done to her before they killed her. She deserved to be_ here, _breathing, existing, living in that fragment of space and time. She should’ve been the one staring at an unmarked grave in the middle of the night, standing above Shaw’s rotting corpse instead. Samaritan had kidnapped_ her, _tortured_ her, _broken_ her, _they should’ve just cleaned up their mess and killed_ her _too._

_Root shouldn’t have let herself die, she shouldn’t have taken that bullet for Harold’s selfish, entitled ass, she shouldn’t have put Harold’s life above her own, anybody’s life above her own, not when she was_ Root, _the fundamental, essential piece of everything._

_They say the best way to kill something is to cut it off at the roots; Shaw sometimes had to put her own hand over her heart just to remind herself that it was still beating._

_She pulled a broken shovel out of its place in the empty plot beside Root’s and slammed it into the tombstone. It was just a rock and her body wasn’t even there because Samaritan and killed her and dug her up and cut her up but she just needed to break_ something _and that useless hunk of stone was the only thing there to hit so she swung to the rhythm each ‘clang’ echoed out into the air until the already-broken handle completely snapped into two. Bear had backed away from the hostile explosion but he slowly trotted back up to Shaw and cautiously nudged her fingers with his nose until she tore her eyes away from the chipped stone to look at him._

_“I’m sorry, buddy,” she sighed, rubbing his ears. She dropped down to eye level with the dog and leaned against Root’s tombstone with her back, letting it support her. Bear curled up beside her with his head in her lap._

_“It’s okay, Bear. We’ll be okay,” she whispered gently, running her hands up and down his soft fur. He looked up to meet her eyes when she spoke._

_“We’ll be okay,” she repeated under her breath, so low she wasn’t entirely sure if she had even spoken out loud. She didn’t know if she was reassuring Bear or herself. She stayed there, her back against the cracked tombstone with Bear sleeping in her lap until dawn awoke up from its nap and the sky bled into morning._

_***_

_When she went to visit John, she did so on purpose. It was only a few days after her trip to Root’s grave, and she was mostly just curious to see if it felt any different, talking to a tombstone that actually had a body buried beneath it, but also a little bit because as much as she tried to deny it, she really did miss John. She was searching for some kind of closure to something she never realized had even been opened._

_He was buried as John Riley, an NYPD detective who’d gone down in the line of duty, and Shaw supposed it was more fitting than the assortment of random numbers on Root’s grave, random numbers that would eventually be on her grave, but she still thought he deserved to be buried in a military graveyard. He gave his country everything he had, the majority of his time and eventually his life.  He should’ve been buried with the rest of his brothers and sisters in arms. Shaw knew she’d never wind up buried next to any fellow Marines, she’d undoubtedly be buried a Jane Doe, and the thought didn’t bother her in the slightest. But John was more of the sentimental type; he joined the Army because of his father after all, and she thought he deserved to be buried like the war hero he was._

_She briefly considered digging him up herself and moving his body, even though he was nearly twice her size and it was the middle of the night and she had no equipment to pull off a successful body-snatch, but she eventually decided it didn’t matter. He was dead. His body was going to rot the same here as it would there. He wouldn’t know the difference. It wouldn’t bring him back, and it wouldn’t make him more of a hero. He died to save a country who would never even know his name. He was a hero regardless of where his body laid to rest._

_“You always did have to be the hero, huh?” She shook her head with a light laugh, one that was hollow and empty._

_“Bear misses you,” she breathed out._ I miss you _._

_“Thank you, John. For…well just, thank you.” Her cracked whisper pierced through the sharp breeze, a eulogy for a fallen soldier, a brother. Shaw learned many things in the Marines and the ISA, but loyalty was not of them. She learned loyalty, partnership, and trust from John._

_She left Bear’s dog tags buried in the dirt above his casket and never went back to either grave again._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I used Google Translate to translate "Root" into German, Spanish, and Farsi, so I'm sorry if they're incorrect or the wrong form of "Root" or whatever. Hope you enjoyed anyway! And of course, thank you to everyone for the kudos and comments. I greatly appreciate the feedback.


	5. Fade Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Miss Shaw...you killed one of the perpetrators?” He looked shocked, like it was actually news to him.
> 
> “No,” Shaw shook her head and Harold relaxed.
> 
> “I killed the victim,” she finished, taking a long swig from the bottle of beer and missing Harold’s deer-in-the-headlights expression.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry it took so long to update. I'm moving next week and I've been so busy with packing and whatnot I barely got a chance to sit down. This is kind of long though so I hope that makes up for it! I had the first part of this written out last week but my computer crashed and I lost it all, so I'm sorry if it's not the greatest but I hate rewriting things and so I just half assed it. Oops! Hope you enjoy, all feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading!

Shaw was hesitant about taking the new recruits on a mission already. They weren’t _nearly_ ready in her opinion, but The Machine had decided that learning on the field was quicker than learning in a gym, or maybe she thought it’d be good for Shaw to work a number with a team again instead of solo, or maybe she just wanted to punish Shaw for what she did to Milo by sticking her with a bunch of scraggly kids who couldn’t even shoot straight for back up. Whatever Her reasons, Shaw was not impressed. But, despite her grievances about the situation, she followed her orders like always.

Well, almost always.

Shaw was a good soldier and had been her whole life, but there was a reason The Machine had deemed her an anomaly. Even the best of soldiers broke their orders sometimes. Like when they found out their boss tried to have them killed, for instance.

But _this_ was the mission, and the mission always mattered. It had to. Because Root had believed in it so faithfully and John had followed so devotedly and she gave up her fucking sanity to keep that bundle of Play Stations in the subway safe. That couldn’t be for nothing. And so no matter how many sleepless nights she’d given over to 2am runs through Central Park, and no matter how many bags of takeout she slumped into her trash can untouched, and no matter how many rolls of bandages she’d torn through to patch up what felt like permanently bloody knuckles, everything was okay because the _mission_ was the only thing that mattered.

Bear was clean and fed and got regular exercise, and the payphone still rattled off numbers of irrelevant lives, and so it didn’t matter to Shaw that she had lost 10 pounds and grown a full shade paler and it didn’t matter that her vacant eyes were hiding behind planets of darkness from the sleep she’d all but given up on; it didn’t matter that the skin behind her ear was rubbed completely raw and it didn’t matter that the barrel of a gun felt just as comfortable pointed at her own head as it did at someone else’s. Bear and the mission were okay, and that meant she was okay too.

After all, she was only in it for the mission and the dog anyway.

The trainees were exceedingly cautious around Shaw ever since the ‘incident’ with Milo; she’d even caught them drawing straws to see who would get stuck approaching her for a question they needed answered, but it didn’t bring her the satisfaction that it used to. She used to get off intimidating people, but now it was just irritating. Her only backup was more afraid of her than the perpetrators they were after.

The number of the day was one Noah Johnson, the single most boring human being Shaw had ever heard of. He’d lived in New York his entire life, married his high school sweet heart, got his degree in Business & Marketing from NYU and seemed to be the walking definition of the word “average.” The only thing he was in danger of seemed to be from boring himself to death. The first day Shaw spent tailing him, she’d nearly given up and decided The Machine was just glitching again.

But then she remembered the last time the team let someone off the hook as a supposed “glitch.” That “glitch” wound up putting a hole in Root’s chest shortly thereafter and Shaw wasn’t about to make the same mistake.

She chose two of the “ducklings” as she’d dubbed them, the two that seemed the least useless, to take with her and directed the rest to collect intel. With The Machine’s help, even they couldn’t _possibly_ screw that up. She took Tyler the ex-mall cop (mostly because he was big enough to at least _appear_ threatening) and Nina the ex-con (because even a scrawny blonde could handle herself _some_ after a 6-year sentence) trailing behind her, she set off to get Noah out of whatever trouble he’d managed to squeeze himself into. Because there was no way in Hell that dreary sack of all things average was the perpetrator.

They found him in a position that Shaw thought could’ve been very exciting in slightly different circumstances. He was handcuffed to a chair at his own kitchen table with a hood over his head while his psychotic wife was simultaneously cooking dinner and threatening to kill him. Judging by the weapons on the counter between the tub of butter and the rack of spices, it wasn’t a farfetched guess to assume she fully intended on following through with her threat.

“As much as I hate to uh, break up this little dinner party, I’m in a bit of hurry so you’re really going to need to cut to the chase, Rebecca.” Shaw sighed when she busted through the door and took in her surroundings. Noah squirmed under the table, trying to say something through the duct tape over his mouth, but Shaw didn’t bother trying to decipher his words. Behind her, Tyler and Nina drew their weapons but kept them trained on the floor with no idea where to aim.

“Who are you?” Rebecca stepped forward in a way that Shaw could only assume was meant to be menacing. She had to suppress a laugh.

“I’ve been asking myself that a lot lately,” she admitted, “but why don’t we skip the formalities. I’m the one that’s about to kick your ass if you don’t let us take your husband. Preferably _before_ you try to kill him,” Shaw shrugged, not even motioning towards her weapon at all.

“The police will be here any minute!” Tyler yelled in a manner he probably thought was threatening but his voice came out higher pitched than Shaw’s. She rolled her eyes at him. _This is why I prefer to work alone,_ she thought to herself.

She was a little surprised at the smirk the woman passed to her. She clearly had no professional experience in what she was doing, and yet despite the fact that Shaw had flashed her signature I’m-going-to-hurt-you glare with two guns ready behind her, the woman just smiled almost _playfully._ Shaw had a sick feeling in her stomach at the sight of it. It was too familiar and too foreign all at the same time; Root’s signature smirk on someone else’s lips. Shaw had her own gun pointed at the woman before she had a chance to even breathe.

“Time’s up,” Shaw sneered before pulling her trigger at the woman’s kneecaps, but she wasn’t quick enough. She leapt behind the counter and before Shaw could adjust and fire again, three men in hoods rushed out from the bedroom behind the kitchen and open fired. Tyler and Nina were out of the door and down the hallway before they’d even realized that Shaw hadn’t followed them. And of course she hadn’t. The mission was to get the number, and she wasn’t about to run away when he was still in the apartment building.

She managed to take down the three hooded guys with relative ease. They had firepower, sure, but they were by no means professionals. They were just big guys with big toys and no idea how to use them. Unfortunately, Rebecca had skipped out during the fire fight and taken her husband with her.

 _What the hell did you get yourself into, Noah,_ Shaw thought as she grabbed one of the guns from the groaning guy closet to her and took off out of the building. She found Tyler and Nina waiting for her at the end of the hall.

“What are you guys doing?” Shaw asked them as she hit the elevator button and then changed her mind and pulled open the door for the stairs.

“Waiting for you,” Tyler shrugged but was careful to make sure he wasn’t within arm’s reach. Shaw stopped and turned to him incredulously.

“You watched the perp run past you _with our number_ and you thought the best plan was to wait for me?” She clarified, ushering them down the stairs before Noah and his wife got too far away.

“We weren’t sure what your plan was,” Nina said slowly.

“My plan was to _not_ let the perp run off with our number,” Shaw grumbled under her breath, increasing her pace until she heard Tyler nearly tripping over the steps to keep up. This is exactly what happened when your “team” was too afraid of you to make their own decisions. She suddenly had an ache in her chest wishing John were there instead.

They caught Rebecca with her arm around someone that stopped Shaw dead in her tracks. They were rushing down an empty alley way, and even though she could only see their backs and they were pretty far away, Shaw could’ve sworn she recognized that stature, that short brown hair, and before she could stop it, flashes of Jeremy Lambert exploded in her head.

“No, you’re dead. I killed you.” She whispered as they got further and further away.

“What?” Nina asked cautiously, a few paces in front of Shaw and unsure of whether it was safest to stay where she was with that look on Shaw’s face, or chase after the crazy woman who would probably kill her before she could even get close.

“Is this another simulation?” She asked, turning to Tyler like he would have the answer. He looked to Nina for help but she just took a few steps back, letting him know he was on his own.

“A simulation?” He questioned, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“No, I got you out of my head,” she shook her head and mumbled almost to herself. She was running down the alley again before Tyler and Nina could process what happened.

“Where’s Greer?” She shouted when they had the couple in their sights again. They didn’t turn around, but Shaw was _certain_ it was Jeremy Lambert ahead of her. She spent nine months with the man; she _knew_ him.  

“Who’s Greer?” Nina asked before Shaw spun around and body slammed Nina into the wall with a grunt.

“You workin’ with them too?” She asked, eyebrows raised. Nina shook her head and stumbled for words. Tyler considered trying to pull Shaw away, but he backed away instead.

“They’re getting away,” he said carefully, hoping to distract Shaw away from Nina and back to the situation at hand. There was a wild look in her eyes that almost pained him to see. He recognized the darkness in there; he’d seen the same look in his brother’s eyes when he got back from his tour in Iraq.

She had the unmistakable eyes of a broken soldier.

Shaw dropped Nina from her grasp and took off running after the couple again, shaking her head as she moved like she was having a fight with herself. When they finally caught up to the couple, Shaw raised her gun to shoot at Rebecca. At least, that’s what Nina and Tyler thought.

Instead, the man dropped to the ground face first with a hole in the back of his head.

They thought it was a mistake until they saw Shaw with her gun still out, her hands trembling and eyes closed while she whispered to herself.

“I didn’t sign up for murder!” Tyler exclaimed, looking around in horror.

“Yeah, me neither. No way in Hell am I going back to prison…” Nina said slowly.

“That’s Jeremy Lambert,” Shaw told them like that cleared everything up, her knuckles white around the gun.

“No, that’s our number,” Nina said slowly, contemplating reaching out for the gun in Shaw’s hand but thinking better of it.

“No, no, it’s Lambert” Shaw shook her head, but refused to look back over at the body bleeding out 20 feet in front of her.

“No, that’s Noah Johnson…” Tyler spoke up after calming himself slightly. He was more concerned about getting Shaw to calm down for his own safety than anything else.

“This isn’t real,” she said, her voice cracking, and the way her lips curled into a half-smile half-frown had Nina and Tyler wondering just how crazy she was. If only they knew what she’d been through.

“Of course it’s real?” Nina voiced, confused. Shaw walked over to the body in front of her, not even realizing that Rebecca was long gone, and rolled him over.

“It’s Noah Johnson,” she said monotonously.

“It was Lambert, but I already killed him… And now this is Johnson?” Her voice was a whisper as she put her hands up and pushed on her temples like she was trying to force her thoughts together.

“They’re still controlling me,” she started, before turning back towards Nina and Tyler with a look of determination in her eyes. “I gotta go.”

And she left them there with the dead body of the man they were supposed to protect.

***

That night, somewhere between the last sip of cheap whiskey straight from the bottle and a stare down with her own blood shot eyes in the bathroom mirror, she heard a cautious knock on her door. She wasn’t sure who she expected to be standing there facing her at one in the morning, but she knew she was _not_ expecting it to be Harold Finch.

“Did I pass out already and forget about it?” She slurred a little as she met Harold’s concerned gaze.

“I assure you Miss Shaw; this is not a dream.” He replied slowly.

 “Simulation then, maybe?” She asked, meaning it to come off as a joke but the alcohol in her system suppressed any hint of extra effort she might’ve put into the conversation and it just came out flatly.

Harold frowned.

Bear came running out from the bedroom at the sound of Harold’s voice, but even he could sense the tension in the room. He stood by Shaw’s leg, tail whacking the tile in anticipation, but he waited for her OK to approach Harold. Harold may have raised the dog first, but nobody could deny the fact that Bear was _her_ dog. Bear respected her above anyone else.

“Oh dear, you look…not entirely well,” he tried again, deliberately choosing his words with caution like always.

“I know I look like shit, Harold. What do you want?” She asked, moving out of the way for him to step into the apartment only because she didn’t want another noise complaint filed against her for arguing with someone in the hallway.

“I just came to see how you are,” he told her unconvincingly.

“Little late for that, don’t you think?” She replied with her back turned, looking through her liquor cabinet for another bottle of something, anything, but it was running dangerously low these days. She settled for a half-finished beer on her counter. She couldn’t remember if it was from yesterday or the day before, but in all honestly, she was too far gone to taste how stale it was anyway.

“I’d offer you something to eat, but seeing as I just finished off my dinner,” she nodded towards the empty bottle of whiskey on her counter, “I don’t think I have anything you’d like.”

Harold took a deep breath.

“Miss Shaw, _Sameen,”_ he corrected, like using her first name would make him seem friendlier. It only sent a sharp jolt down her spine. She felt nauseous for a moment at the thought that her _own name_ made her think of Root and the way she smiled with her eyes every time she said it. Then she decided maybe the nausea came from the alcohol, though it wasn’t likely with how much she’d been pushing into her system lately.

“I just came by because I think we should _talk_ about –” Shaw cut him off.

“You just,” she shook her head and took a deep breath before continuing. “ _came by,_ after _five months_ of radio silence, so we could, what? Have a little chat?” She asked incredulously, trying her best to keep her words from slurring because it was hard to appear intimidating and intoxicated at the same time.

Harold opened his mouth to reply, but she didn’t let him.

“I know what this is about,” she sighed. “So why don’t we just skip the small talk and go right for the goodbyes. I don’t need _another_ lecture about why it’s wrong to kill people.”

He cocked his head to the side, unsure of where she was going with this.

“Don’t play with me, Finch,” Shaw sighed. “I know She called you and told you what happened with Noah Johnson.”

“Noah Jonson?”

“The number I killed today?” She said in irritation, waiting for him to drop the charade.

“Miss Shaw...you _killed_ one of the perpetrators?” He looked shocked, like it was _actually_ news to him.

“No,” Shaw shook her head and Harold relaxed.

“I killed the victim,” she finished, taking a long swig from the bottle of beer and missing Harold’s deer-in-the-headlights expression.

“I assure you, Sameen,” Shaw rolled her eyes at his switch back to using her first name. He only did it when he wanted something from her. The same as when he only called Root by _Root_ when he needed something. He continued,

“The Machine told me of no such thing. She simply suggested that I come back to New York for an urgent situation and stop by your apartment.”

Shaw didn’t say anything, just stared blankly ahead as she finished off her old beer. Harold tried to press on,

“I understand that you have had some…experiences that have hindered your…judgment recently, but you are not alone. There are more…healthy ways to cope with loss.”

Shaw swallowed, _hard,_ but bit her tongue.

“I know there will of course be some…lasting damage from your…time with Samaritan –”

“My _time with Samaritan?”_ Shaw couldn’t help but cut him off to laugh. “You make it sound like a field trip to the zoo. Let’s not be afraid to call it was it is, Harold.”

“Of course. And while not all…scars are exactly…physical –” Shaw cut him off again.

“Plenty of those too,” she said mid swallow and it came out garbled but Harold got the message.

“Right, yes. But the _torture –”_ he corrected himself, “–from Samaritan has clearly…left its mark. And I think that we should be…working to get past…that incident.”

Shaw didn’t speak again for a while. Bear sat at her feet, staring up at Harold but remaining loyal. Harold knew better than to reach out for Bear. He tried to be patient with Shaw, but she angrier than usual and drunk and utterly hopeless. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand her penetrating gaze in the silence.

“It should’ve been you,” she eventually mumbled, her voice low. He wasn’t sure he’d even heard her correctly.

“I’m sorry?” He leaned forward a bit, Bear’s ears perking up as he looked to Shaw again for permission, but she gave none.

“Instead of Root, Hell, instead of John. It should’ve been you.” She didn’t look away from his eyes, making her message clear.

“I agree.” He said after a long pause, and even Shaw was surprised by the sincerity in his small voice. It didn’t change her mood though.

“You locked her in a cage like an _animal._ You forced her into a psychiatric hospital because _you_ were _afraid._ Do you know what they did to her in there, Finch? She still has nightmares about it sometimes.” The words came tumbling out before she could fully think through what she was saying. One of the many unfortunate side effects of alcohol. Then she shook her head and corrected herself, eyes dropping down to her tile floor.

“Had. _Had_ nightmares.”  

“I had no idea –” Harold started, but Shaw’s words were falling out of her mouth now. She wasn’t even bothering to try and keep her words from slurring. She was too drunk to care that she _sounded_ drunk.

“You forced her in there out of fear that somebody might actually be as smart as you, and then you put her in a fucking _cage._ And you refused to call her by her _name_ no matter how much it hurt her that you did so. She stopped being “Samantha Groves” a long time ago, Finch. It was condescending as hell to remind her of it every chance you got.”

“That’s certainly not how I –”

“And then you had the audacity to call her a friend because, what? You liked having someone wrapped around your finger? You had no respect for her, Harold. And she was a better person than you or I will ever be. You treated _Bear_ with more dignity than you did her, and she still _died_ for you.”

“I –”

“You what? You’re sorry? Sorry doesn’t mean shit. Just go home, Finch. Stop trying to pretend you aren’t just a selfish coward. Go,” she demanded. Harold looked around as if debating how strong his sense of self-preservation was, but he seemed to decide he owed Shaw more than a half-hearted lecture. He could be her punching bag for a little while longer if he needed to be.

“You’re right.”

Shaw was surprised for a moment. Not because she doubted being right, but because Harold _never_ just gave into her like that. He certainly never admitted he was _wrong_ that easily.

“What?” She asked, wondering if she’d heard him correctly. She wanted to get a rise out of him, wanted to pick a fight because he was the only one there and for once she was trying to pick a fight with someone who deserved it. She didn’t expect him to just _concede._

“You’re right. It should’ve been me instead of Miss – instead of Root. Instead of John.” Even in her drunken state Shaw picked up on the sadness that blanketed John’s name when he said it.

“Too late for that now.” Shaw spat out. Harold nodded solemnly.

“I suppose it is.”

“You never deserved them. You didn’t deserve any of us.” Shaw told him, not entirely meaning what she said but still wanting to hurt him. She did blame him enough to want to cause him pain, and she had no qualms about injuring a disabled man, but Root and John gave their lives for his and so despite how much she wanted to just let her anger out on him, she knew she had to hold back. She may have no friendly feelings left for Harold, but she felt almost possessive over his life now. He simply wasn’t _allowed_ to die or get seriously injured; it’d be a waste of what Root and John gave up their lives for.

“When I was taken, you didn’t even look for me. You tried to stop John and Root. You just assumed I was dead. You just gave up and moved on like I was nothing the whole time. You don’t know what they did to me, Harold. What they’re still doing to me,” Shaw’s voice was softer than she wanted it to be.

“What do you mean?” He asked for clarification.

“I don’t know if any of this is real.” Her voice was a small whisper.

“Miss Shaw –”

“And I don’t know any more if I want it to be,” she admitted. That’s when he caught sight of the blood stain on the shoulder of her shirt and the gauze taped behind her ear.

“What happened?” He asked, reaching out for the bandage but she flinched away and he let his hand drop.

“I was looking for something,” she told him, and he noticed the stained red tips of her fingers too.

“A chip. In my head. But it wasn’t there, or maybe I just didn’t go deep enough,” she explained further, much to Harold’s horror.

“There’s no chip. This isn’t a simulation.”

“I’m not sure about that anymore. I just _don’t know._ ” Her voice was broken and he could tell from the way she white-knuckled the counter that the alcohol was finally catching up to her and she was getting dizzy.

“I’m worried about you, Sameen,” Harold admitted, and Shaw saw red for just a moment. _He used my first name again._ She wasn’t even sure why it bothered her so much.

“Now you’re worried? Now that you think I’m a lose canon or something? You start to care about me _now?”_ Shaw wasn’t sure why she was even angry. It shouldn’t matter if he cared about her or not. She didn’t care about him. That’s what she told herself anyway.

“I’ve always cared –” He started to defend himself but she didn’t give him the opportunity.

“Did you care about us when Carter died, and you wouldn’t let John get his revenge? Or when I was kidnapped, but you wouldn’t let Root come after me? Did you care about us when you refused to let any of us ever get revenge, but you still told us to kill anyone who hurt Grace? You’re just a selfish asshole. You’ve never cared. You didn’t care when you just disappeared without even _telling me_ John was dead, when you left without even asking if Fusco and I had made it. You can’t just start caring when it affects _you.”_

Finch stared at her open mouthed for a moment, like he wasn’t sure if he was going to agree with her or defend himself, or maybe some combination of both.

“What kind of captain doesn’t go down with his ship?” Shaw asked, not breaking eye contact, and that’s what his him the hardest.

“You started this war the day you agreed to build The Machine. Why are you the only one to get a happy ending after a war _you_ started?”

“I don’t know,” Harold finally admitted after a long pause. His voice was flat.

“A good captain goes down with his ship; he doesn’t run off with his girlfriend after letting his whole crew drown.”

“You’re right,” Harold said again, his voice softer this time.

“Goodnight, Sameen,” he started, and this time he spoke her name with such sincerity that she almost let Bear say his hellos and goodbyes to Harold. She didn’t.

“If you need anything at all, I’m just a phone call away. Be safe.” He added, before looking longingly at Bear and walking out of the apartment, shutting the door behind him.

Bear nudged her fingers with his nose, trying to comfort her, but he stared at the door long after Harold walked out. She knew he missed him and for a moment, she almost considered calling Harold back just to comfort Bear. Almost. Instead she gave him half a bag of dog treats and hoped the food made him feel better.

He was _her_ dog after all.


	6. Touch of Grey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flashback chapter. Takes place in season 4 right before Shaw's cover get's blown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the waits between the updates - I'm writing another fic as well, I'm moving this week, I just started a new job, and this semester just started for school. I've been so busy I barely have time to sit down! Hope you enjoy anyways. As always, thanks for reading and thank you for your feedback.

_Shaw’s hair was still sticky with sweat, her chest still heaving up and down, wrists still raw and stinging from the ropes hanging from her cracked headboard when a deep, guttural growl escaped from her stomach. Root shifted uncomfortably from the rumble, hoping Shaw would just let it go and let her relax a bit longer, but she knew better than to expect anything other than the following groan of “I’m hungry” that came shortly after the noise._

_“Just a few more minutes,” Root begged, not opening her eyes. She’d just had the workout of her life and her arms were numb to her shoulders and she couldn’t feel her legs at all and she just needed a few minutes to catch her breath before she was off to feed Shaw_ again. _Shaw didn’t have to answer; her stomach did for her. It felt like an earthquake against Root’s chest, a loud grumble that lasted twice as long as the first one. Root just sighed, sitting up, peeling their bare skin apart. She took a moment to appreciate the way Shaw’s sweat soaked skin glistened in the cracks of sunlight that crept through her curtains. Her dark hair was untamed, sticking to her face and sprawled out across the pillow and a few strands clung to her neck and down her chest. Root always loved seeing her with her hair down, especially when it was such an uncontrollable mess. Shaw’s eyes were still closed, so Root let her gaze linger just a little bit longer than she otherwise would have; she let her eyes fall over Shaw’s high cheekbones, her hard jaw line, her bruised bottom lip bleeding lightly down the middle. She looked so soft, lying there in bed with the sunlight sneaking in, illuminating her skin to the most perfect shade of gold, and somehow the knowledge that Shaw was the furthest thing from_ soft _just made Root want brush her fingertips across her features even more._

_“I can feel you staring,” Shaw grumbled, moving her hands up to rub her eyes as her stomach growled_ again.

_“Can you blame me?” Root replied with a quick smirk, brushing her own hair out of her face. She’d never admit it to Shaw, but sometimes, when she was laying there in her arms and soaking up the perfection of the woman wrapped around her, she wondered if Shaw had ever done the same. She knew it was a ridiculous thought; Shaw would never be that sappy. Her after-sex thoughts included either what she wanted to eat or which side of the room her bra had ended up on. But Root couldn’t help but lie there and wonder if she was too pale or too lanky or if the silvery scars splattered across her torso were too distasteful. She knew it was ridiculous, but when your childhood is completely cut in half and you’ve committed your first murder before you even got your first period, you never really find the chance to work through the normal teenage things like those pesky self-image problems. In all honesty, she never thought about it at all until she met Shaw and from the very first moment she opened that door of Veronica Sinclair’s hotel room she’d had this nagging feeling buried deep down that she just wasn’t good enough._

_She didn't know Shaw found her body irritatingly mesmerizing; enthralling and begging to be explored even after they'd had sex. She didn't know Shaw traced the scars on her body in her sleep like they were a roadmap to home, a place Shaw didn't even recognize but had the trail to memorized anyway. She didn't know Shaw's warm, open-mouthed kisses down her torso weren't just randomly placed; Shaw liked the feel of the silvery skin of Root's scars under her tongue, each carrying a story neither of them could exactly remember. Her own were a dark, angry red, raised and vibrant like a reminder they never got to heal properly. Shaw didn't mind - she loved her battle scars - but something about the marks on Root were different. Just one more bullet point on the list of all the things making Root_ Root, _making her body alone so captivating. She was decorated in constellations instead of craters, both so constant in the grand chasm of the universe and yet Shaw found something about the patterns along Root's porcelain skin so much bigger than every galaxy combined. Sometimes it scared her; she'd never been so drawn to the details of another human body before. She didn't know what that meant and chose not to think about it. Root never knew just how much she really got under Shaw's skin. Although, in all honesty, even Shaw didn't know. Root brought too many feelings that she didn't have names for, had never felt before, and she swallowed them down as best she good rather than dealing with them._

_“Stop,” Shaw demanded as she sat up with a yawn. Root was torn from her train of thought._

_“I’m not doing anything,” she defended, stretching a little before dragging herself off the bed and searching for the clothes she was sure had wound up in a corner somewhere. Shaw pulled her shirt out from where it had been wedged between the mattress and the headboard, passing it to her as she spoke._

_“I can practically hear you thinking.” Shaw grabbed the shirt back from Root when she realized the buttons were torn clear down the center._

_“It’s nothing,” Root shook her head, following Shaw over to her dresser. Shaw tossed her a sweatshirt from the top drawer, an old Marines one with faded lettering and a few stains Root had decided were either blood or barbeque sauce. She couldn’t tell which; they had an equal probability._

_“It’s wrong,” Shaw clarified, putting on a pair of black jeans from the floor. Root was still wandering around the room aimlessly looking for her own pants._

_“Hmm?” Root hummed, tossing around the sheets but only finding one of her socks._

_“Whatever’s running through your mind right now, it’s wrong. Stop overthinking everything, Eeyore.” Shaw pulled a gray tank top over her shoulders, her skin stinging a bit as the tank top brushed over the fresh scratches down her back. She smiled lightly to herself as she flexed her shoulders and let the material brush over them again._

_“I was just thinking about you, sweetie,” Root said with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. It wasn’t entirely a lie. Shaw rolled her eyes as she pulled a pair of boots out of her closet, but Root didn’t have to see her to know. There wasn’t much Shaw_ didn’t _roll her eyes at._

_“I think they’re in the kitchen,” Shaw changed the subject, gesturing to Root who had nearly given up her search for pants all together. They found them under the kitchen table, resting beneath the shattered glass of a few broken plates. Shaw pulled the jeans out and shook off the glass fragments before passing them back to Root. She didn’t take her eyes off her legs until she had the button done around her waist. Shaw grabbed her coat and they headed out the door, not even stopping as the neighbors called after her to complain about the noise_ again _._

_Root was a bit surprised when Shaw called over a taxi. She just assumed they’d be stopping at the closest place for takeout they could find, something near the apartment; Shaw didn’t usually like to waste time being picky if she was hungry. But this time, she seemed to have a specific destination in mind._

_“Where are we going?” Root asked as they loaded into the cab. The cab driver evidently recognized Shaw as soon as she slid into the backseat. They had a conversation in Farsi, which Root didn’t catch any of, but she was captivated with listening anyway. Shaw was angry and they were both yelling, but Shaw still spoke so beautifully Root didn’t even care to wonder what she was saying. The only word she caught was ‘gun,’ which wasn’t exactly shocking. After a few moments, Root watched the cabbie slink back into his seat with a petrified expression and Shaw leaned back with a satisfied smile._

_“So where are we going?” Root asked again, leaning closer to Shaw. She could see the cab driver glancing back at them through his rear view mirror every few moments, a panicked fear in his eyes before he turned his gaze back to the road. Root felt herself grinning every time their eyes met. She wasn’t sure what Shaw had said to him, but he seemed sufficiently afraid of whatever it was._

_“If you ask me again, I’m pushing you out of the cab.” Shaw griped, not bothering to turn her head to face her. Root let out a deep sigh but didn’t press the matter. If Shaw was just going to be irritable towards her, there were much more fun ways to make it happen._

_The cab dropped them off in front of a restaurant Root had never seen before. It was a bit out of the way and didn’t seem to be very popular but even she could tell the air of familiarity that it had for Shaw._

_“Come here often?” Root asked, a playful lilt in her voice that Shaw chose to ignore. Root chased after her up the steps to the restaurant._

_“Once or twice,” she shrugged as she approached the hostess. Root was a bit surprised when Shaw requested a specific table._

_“What’s so special about that table?” Root asked her, her curiosity getting the best of her as the hostess turned to grab behind the counter to grab their menus._

_“It’s got the nicest view. If I’m going to pay these kind of prices for food, I want something nice to look at too.” Shaw reasoned, and Root tried to swallow the lump that had just formed in her throat._

_Shaw turned her head a little when she felt Root stiffen beside her, just as the hostess stepped out to lead them to their table._

_“Root?”_

_Root hummed in response._

_“I meant something other than you.” Shaw’s voice was low and she didn’t look directly at Root and the words came out strangled like they were hard for her to say, but Root’s whole body still lit up in a smug grin anyway._

_Shaw may not be exactly forthcoming with compliments, but she wasn’t one to say things she didn’t mean._

_Shaw made her order without even looking at the menu as soon as they were seated, before the waiter had even brought them their drinks. Root, however, took her time browsing through her options, grinning wickedly when Shaw kicked her shin from under the table to tell her to hurry up. Shaw just wound up ordering for her before she had to wait any longer for her steak. Root beamed as Shaw unknowingly played right into her trap._

_“You were right, Sameen. The view is beautiful,” Root commented through the straw in her teeth, but she hadn’t even glanced out the window, hadn’t even noticed the pink skyline fading into the sunset. She hadn’t torn her eyes away from Shaw since the waiter left with their orders. Shaw just nodded in agreement, not meeting Root’s eyes or catching her implication. She was absently rubbing at the raw skin on her wrists and Root’s throat went dry at the sight._

_When the waiter finally arrived with their order, Shaw dove in, either forgetting they were in a restaurant or simply not caring. She didn’t even use her knife; just jabbed the fork into the center of the steak and devoured it. Root had never felt more enamored than she did in that moment, watching Shaw with steak sauce dripping down her face with more meat stuffing her cheeks than she could easily chew. Root picked at her plate some, but she didn’t feel very hungry. Then again, she never really did._

_But for some reason, the sides on Shaw’s plate just tasted so much better than the ones on her own. She kept dodging the hand coming down to smack her thieving fingers away, narrowly escaping with a few bites at a time. Shaw’s response was rather unenthusiastic; Root had seen her stick a fork into a man’s hand over a single French fry after all, and she knew at least subconsciously Shaw was allowing her to get away with the food snatching._

_“Stop that,” Shaw rolled her eyes, halfheartedly smacking at Root’s hand as she chewed up her final bite of steak._

_“But everything tastes so much better off your plate,” Root pouted. Shaw shook her head and scoffed, swallowing the food in her mouth before replying._

_“Next time I see your fingers near my plate, I’m cutting them off,” she threated, and she was pretty satisfied that she’d made her point until she watched Root pull her pouting bottom lip back into her mouth, dragging it through her teeth while the edges of her lips pulled into a smirk._

_“I can think of a few other things for you to do with my fingers," Root cooed, snaking her slender fingers over to Shaw’s plate again and not breaking eye contact with her as she snagged another piece of food from it. She let her index finger linger in her mouth, clasped between her lips as she pushed the bite of food inside. Shaw cleared her throat but didn’t look away, and certainly didn’t cut any of Root’s fingers off either._

_Root did have a point._

_“So how’d you find this place?” Root asked, washing down her portion of Shaw’s meal with a long gulp of her drink and feeling satisfied that she’d won the showdown._

_“My dad uh, he took my mom here once. For their first date.” Shaw confessed, suddenly much more interested in her side salad than Root had ever seen her. Root’s chest swelled so much she briefly wondered if she was still breathing, but she swallowed the sheer adoration blossoming within her and schooled the expression on her face into something slightly less ecstatic, if only to keep from putting any more weight onto Shaw’s perfectly sculpted shoulders. She could wait and tease her about it later, when the moment wasn’t so fresh and she wanted more than anything in the world to keep it from ending._

_“It’s nice,” Root replied sincerely, and Shaw’s eyes darted back up in confusion. She waited for Root to make a bigger deal out of what she was sure Root saw as some grand gesture, but she didn’t say anything more. Maybe she understood that Shaw just really liked the food there. Maybe she accepted that Shaw didn’t see much in the sentiment of it. Maybe she was just too afraid to shatter the moment with the truth._

_Shaw really didn’t think it was a big deal, but she knew Root thought it would be. And as much as she dreaded the onslaught of teasing she was sure the trip to the restaurant would bring, she had a feeling deep in her gut that wanted to share the place with Root anyway. Shaw wasn’t used to questioning her instincts and she wasn’t about to start. But it shocked her that Root kept whatever sappy comments she had to herself. Root didn't bring it up the rest of dinner._

_***_

_“Thanks for the date, sweetie. I had a great time,” Root quipped on the walk home, stopping just outside the steps of Shaw’s apartment._

_“The – I’m sorry, what?” Shaw nearly_ tripped _over the crack in the sidewalk. Sameen Shaw does not_ trip. _But Root’s words hit her like a brick wall and she lost her footing in spite of herself._

_“Sam, you took me to a restaurant, ordered my dinner, and let me walk you home.” Root explained with a smile._

_“Now all you have to do is kiss me goodnight,” She added, taking a few steps closer to Shaw. Shaw rolled her eyes._

_“It wasn’t a_ date, _okay? I was just hungry, you never eat unless I make you, and you_ always _follow me home.” Shaw rationalized, her eyebrows furrowed together like she was really trying to figure out how Root could have possibly thought it was a date._

_“That’s a shame,” Root sighed. “I’ve never actually been on one.” Root’s tone was still playful, but her eyes fell just slightly at her admission and Shaw’s inquisitive expression softened without her meaning to._

_“_ What?” _Shaw was taken back slightly. She’d never put much thought into Root’s past dating life, but she had just sort of assumed everyone had been on at least one date at some point or another. Even she had gone out on a few back in high school, mostly as a means to an end before she realized most boys were just as content with skipping the dinner and going straight back to his place as she was. But she wasn’t most people, and Root was actually into all that sappy shit, and it surprised Shaw that had made it this far into her life without ever going on a real date with anybody. She didn’t think that was possible._

_Then again, she didn’t think it was possible to make it this far into life without learning how to properly wink either._

_Root always had been full of surprises._

_“I ran away when I was twelve, Sam. It didn’t exactly leave a lot of time for dating.” Root’s eyes drifted away from Shaw, trying desperately to break her hard gaze but failing miserably. Shaw wasn’t easily deterred when she set her mind to something._

_“But not_ ever?”

_“Not much time for dating when you’re constantly on the run, killing for money or fighting an AI apocalypse either,” she shrugged. “I don’t think it counts as a date if you meet in a bar and head back to her place the same night.”_

_“Sounds like my kind of date,” Shaw smiled, lightening the mood just a bit. Root let her eyes fall back into Shaw’s uncharacteristically warm gaze and felt herself matching her light smile._

_“Let’s go, Nerd. You owe me for tricking me into a date,” Shaw teased. Root’s eyes lit up at Shaw’s acknowledgment of the night, but the smirk that followed was anything but innocent._

_“You have to kiss me goodnight first,” Root demanded playfully. Shaw rolled her eyes, pulling Root in closer to her._

_“I’m going to do a lot more than that,” she whispered into Root’s lips before pushing her own over Root’s mouth. It was soft, chaste. Something Root didn’t think Shaw was even capable of, and something she never thought she’d be capable of enjoying. But her body buzzed at the gentle contact and she distractedly wondered if there was any kind of touch from Shaw that_ wouldn’t _leave her in a drowning in a euphoric high._

_Shaw dug her fingers into Root’s wrist and dragged her up the stairs of her apartment behind her, i_ _gnoring the pounding from the neighbors on the walls from all sides well into the night._


	7. Dissident

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She was red lipstick stains on her favorite t-shirts and angry scars from stitches she'd never learned to do right; she was broken bed frames and bullet holes and blueberry syrup in her hair for days; she was torture and comfort, danger and adventure; she was a goddamn parasite and an unforgiving addiction; she was her safe place, her beautifully dangerous, warzone of a safe place

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god y'all I am so sorry for the wait. These last few weeks have been so insane, I barely have time to sit down and breathe. On top of it all, my laptop has had a virus for a couple months now, so it crashes a LOT, but finally this last time my hard drive is completely trashed as of a couple days ago so I lost everything I'd started writing for this. I had like 2 flashback chapters finished and I was halfway through what was supposed to be this chapter. It's just one thing after another. 
> 
> Hopefully I'll be able to update more often now that things are calming down, as long as I get my laptop fixed soon or can keep borrowing my mom's. I have the next chapter written already, but I can't post it unless they can salvage at least some files off my hard drive. I'm going to wait to see if they can get anything off of it before I start rewriting the next chapter, I should know hopefully in a couple days. I don't make you guys wait this long again if I can help it. 
> 
> Thanks for sticking though the wait I'm so sorry, but I hope you enjoy the chapter nonetheless! It's kind of a slow one, but that's because I just needed to set the foundation for it to really pick up in the next non-flashback chapters. Like always, comments are greatly appreciated.

The Machine hadn't called with a number since the 'incident' with Noah Johnson. Shaw figured the numbers were going somewhere, She wouldn't just let people die because Shaw was in time-out for a week, but when Shaw finally stumbled into the subway eight days into what she thought was her punishment, less hungover than she'd been in a while but still sporting a raging headache behind her eyes, she was not at all prepared to find a familiar mane of dark hair falling over _Root's_ computer chair. Nausea rolled over in Shaw's stomach at the sight; had she been replaced? That's not what Root would've wanted, right? Somehow, she felt like she'd let Root down, like she'd given up, which she supposed she had in some ways, but she never thought The Machine would move on, not after everything.

With a deep breath, she decided the flash of nausea in her gut was caused by her old friend, Jose Cuervo, not from whatever feeling in her chest she'd given up trying to name months ago.

"It's about time," Harper started without turning the chair around. Shaw didn't reply; she held her glare until she knew Harper could feel it crawling on her skin.

"Figured I'd be seeing you sooner or later, but I gotta say, thought it was going to be sooner." She added, finally spinning _her_ chair around to face Shaw at the doorway.

"Been busy," Shaw answered, her voice gruff and her eyes unwavering. Harper raised her eyebrows.

"Yeah, I can see that. Jeez, do you brush your teeth with tequila? It's 7am." She wrinkled her nose a Shaw but her tone was light, teasing. But of course, that only made Shaw angry. Who did this girl think she was, sitting in _Root's_ chair, _teasing_ her at an inappropriate time? It didn't feel right coming from someone else.

"Somethin' like that. Got any numbers?" Shaw shifted the conversation back to work. She needed to get back to work, needed some action before she found it elsewhere. Maybe The Machine thought She was helping, taking Shaw out of the field to give her some space to recover, but she didn't know how to tell Her that she would probably always be 'recovering,' that Samaritan didn't leave her with the kind of wounds you can stitch up and put a band-aid over; she didn't know how to tell Her that she desperately needed things to be as close to normal as possible, because it was getting harder and harder every day to sort out her memories from the simulations, the past from the present, her dreams from her nightmares from reality; it all just blended together and she wasn't sure of anything anymore. She needed a familiar routine before she slipped away completely.

"Not for you," Harper answered sharply, either not noticing Shaw's aggressive stance, her angry gaze and her hands balled up in fists so tight she could feel her nails digging into her palms, or simply not caring. She certainly was the reckless type.

"Listen, I don't know what you -" Shaw started, but Harper cut her off.

"Her orders, not mine," Harper explained nonchalantly with a shrug, gesturing towards the blinking computer system.

"You can't just bench me because I messed up," Shaw growled out, her gaze still on Harper despite the obvious direction of her words towards The Machine.

_**This is not a punishment. I am worried for you.** _

The words blinked across the computer screen. Shaw noted how She still respected her demands of not speaking to her directly, not in Root's voice, even after the night she drunkenly gave in and fell asleep to the sound of _her_.

"I'm _fine,_ " Shaw grumbled, but it sounded like a lie even to her own ears. Her voice was shallow and unconvincing.

**_Analog Interface is experiencing symptoms consistent with post traumatic stress disorder. I am worried._**

"Don't...call me that. Your interface is...gone. I don't want that name." Shaw shook her head. She knew, logically, The Machine had handed her the mantle of analog interface, but it was a position Root held with so much pride, something so much a part of her, Shaw didn't want to take that away from her or lessen the significance of it by never living up to the example Root set. Shaw would never be able to devote her life, body, and mind to The Machine, especially after Samaritan. She'd do what she could, of course, do what she thought Root would've wanted, but she'd never be _the_ analog interface. Root wasn't replaceable - not to Shaw.

She could see Harper raise her eyebrows in question in her peripheral, but she ignored her.

**_Please let me help you. I cannot lose you too. This is not what_ she _would want._ **

"I know," Shaw managed to spit out through gritted teeth, her jaw clenched so hard it hurt all the way into her skull. She knew Root would want her to be okay, but Root also probably did not want to be dead and Shaw definitely didn't want to still be dealing with psychological trauma from being tortured by an artificial intelligence, so she figured we don't always get what we want. She was struggling enough on her own, she didn't need the pressure of feeling like she was disappointing Root by not being okay added on top of it. Shaw thought she disappointed Root enough before she died; she didn't want to think about still disappointing her even after. She could feel Harper's curious gaze pouring over her, and she wanted to leave right then to escape it, but The Machine responded again and it was enough to distract Shaw from Harper's attention.

**_Primary Asset Rose will take over until further notice_. **

Shaw scowled, but Harper just shrugged.

"Take a vacation or something," she suggested casually, but the expression on her face was still full of questions. Shaw didn't dignify her with an answer. She turned on her heel and headed back to the subway door, away from Harper and away from the computer and feeling even more lost than usual.

"I met her once, you know. She was - well I'd say nice, but, you know, she wasn't." Harper's voice rang out just as Shaw opened the subway door. She turned, her brows furrowed together in question. She wasn't sure how Harper knew that her and The Machine were talking about Root, they'd never specified, or even how she knew Root at all, but she felt her chest swell up with a small sense of pride at Harper's word choice.

"No, she wasn't," Shaw agreed, a light smile pulling at her lips. They both sat in comfortable silence for a minute, and Shaw appreciated that Harper didn't expect her to _talk_ about Root. She was content to just let her think, to remember, to put together the fragments of memories that weren't tainted by simulations. She felt compelled to give Harper a word, something to describe Root that was more than 'not nice,' and half a dictionary rushed through her head -  _she was_   _annoying, irritating, downright infuriating, brilliant to the point of annoyance, to the point of insanity, hopelessly relentless, cynical and pragmatic, a sadist in every sense of the word; she was a flirtatious time-bomb, a walking innuendo, ruthless in suggestion but never desperate, never demanding. She was red lipstick stains on her favorite t-shirts and angry scars from stitches she'd never learned to do right; she was broken bed frames and bullet holes and blueberry syrup in her hair for days; she was torture and comfort, danger and adventure; she was a goddamn parasite and an unforgiving addiction; she was her safe place, her beautifully dangerous, warzone of a safe place -_ but somehow, despite the good portion of the English language that came to her all at once, she had nothing to give.

She felt her face turn in frustration, in anger at _still_ having nothing to give. She didn't know she gave Root more than she ever could've asked for. It only just made her feel _inadequate -_ she was the person who was supposed to be able to talk about Root, to _know_ her and describe her and do the things her mother had after her father died, right? She'd never hated her personality disorder before Root, it was pretty useful in her line of work anyway, but with Root, it only made her feel deficient, like she wasn't good enough. It didn't matter how often Root reminded her that she was perfect as is, it was like she saw that firefighter's disappointed eyes every time she looked at her own reflection in the mirror.

She instinctually clenched her fists together, ignoring Harper's prying gaze.

She still blamed Root for her identity crisis.

And she didn't think she'd ever forgive her for worming her way into her every aspect of her life without her even noticing; she didn't think she'd ever forgive her for dying before she was allowed to.

Harper cleared her throat, pulling Shaw out of her reverie and back into the present - the present where she was basically just fired by god...Root's god anyway.

"Take care of yourself," Harper nodded at her, spinning her chair back around to face the computer and opening something Shaw couldn't quite make out up on the screen.

Shaw didn't reply to her; she couldn't make any promises about that. She walked out of the subway in silence.

***

Shaw took a detour to hit the gym on her way home; she'd been working out more than ever since she got back from Samaritan. She felt like her body was failing her; she couldn't move like she used to, she couldn't lift like she could before or run nearly as far. Her bones ached all the time and she'd gotten several minor fractures in her wrists from fights she normally would've walked away from without so much as a bruise. Everything took more energy, and she was still slower than she could ever remember being. Her 'low' was still better than any average person's 'best,' but she wasn't near where she used to be and the realization that she may never get it back pushed her harder than she'd ever been pushed.

She knew what was happening all nine months she spent chained to a bed, despite the few 'field trips' they took her on that allowed her to stretch her muscles. Even once they gave her a room she was occasionally allowed to move around in, they kept her so drugged up that her body still wasn't getting what it needed. She'd been a doctor after all, she knew what prolonged bed rest did to the body.

She could feel her muscles atrophying, feel her bones losing density; even all these months later, her legs still ached if she walked for too long or ran too fast or kicked too hard. She'd always been compared to cat, always 'landed on her feet' so to speak, but ever since Samaritan, her balance was all over the place. Her joints all throbbed and her muscles were growing slower than they ever had in her life - she was thinner than she'd been since med school - and it seemed like no matter how many cardio exercises she worked into her regular routine, her heart just fought against it all. She'd been working out almost every day, pushing herself past what she knew any physical therapist would recommend, but she hadn't been this out of shape in almost 10 years and her frustration with her body just grew more and more each time she worked out. She was definitely improving, but it was a slow progression and Shaw had never been very patient. Even her appetite was nothing compared to what it once was. Sometimes she'd only have one meal a day, sometimes none at all. The first time she ordered a steak after getting back from Samaritan, she only took a few bites and then threw up.

The scars from picking at her bed sores were the only scars she'd ever gotten that made her feel sick to look at. Normally, she liked having battle scars, they were like little trophies all over her skin, reminders of her accomplishments, but she didn't want the reminders of Samaritan.

They broke her mind and took her body and killed her team; she wasn't sure what she even had left anymore.

Samaritan really had taken everything from her.

She hit the bags until her knuckles were bloody and lifted until tears welled up in her eyes and when she finally stumbled over her own feet from seeing stars on her 6th mile around the track, she packed up her things and headed back to her apartment. She spent most of the walk with her eyes clamped shut, trying to sort out if the pain she felt in her muscles was real or if she just had an entire Samaritan audience watching her workout. The pain in the simulations always felt a bit different, not more or less, but just different. She tried to focus on her aching muscles to sort it out, but her head was buzzing too much and she gave up as she dragged her legs up the steps of her apartment building.

Her finger brushed against the spot behind her ear as she opened the door, but the feeling of no scar wasn't nearly as comforting as it used to be.

Maybe Samaritan was just getting more creative.


End file.
